LAAC
The LAAC ( Lieu d'art et action contemporaine , German roughly: Center for contemporary art and action ) is an art museum in Dunkirk that is surrounded by a picturesque sculpture park and presents art from the period between 1940 and 1980. The collection and the construction of the museum go back to the initiatives of an engineer, Gilbert Delaine, who, after discovering his love for contemporary art, worked incessantly to open up his hometown to contemporary art .
The museum, located on the Exutoire Canal , was deliberately placed between the city and the industrial landscape of the port. The hills of the park allow you to look over the museum to the North Sea and the houses of the Dunkirk district of Malo-le-Bains as well as the harbor.
In terms of time, the collection lies between the Dunkirk Museum of Fine Arts in the city center with the old art and the FRAC , in which today's contemporary art is presented. The FRAC, which is housed in a large and tall industrial building in the port, can also be seen from the LAAC.
The collection
The museum has some emblematic works of modern art like Circus by Karel Appel , Car Crash by Andy Warhol and Valise Expansion by César .
The approximately 1,500 works in the collection, of which only a part is shown, include works by Arthur Van Hecke and Ladislas Kijno , who inspired Delaine for modern art , as well as by Nicola Alquin , Arman , Francis Arnal , Georg Baselitz and Claude Viseux , André Fougeron , Luciano Castelli , Philippe Charpentier , Sergio Ferro , Rainer Fetting , Lucio Fontana , Paul Franck , Jacqueline Gainon , Karl Horst Hödicke , Koberling , John Franklin Koenig , Rolf Lukaschewski , Alfred Manessier , Tom Morandi , Mimmo Paladino , Arnulf Rainer , Jacek Andrzej Rossakiewicz , Jean-Jule Chasse-Pot , and Gérard Ernest Schneider .
The sculpture garden
Represented in the sculpture park are Arman with Anchorage , a composition of ship's anchors, Eugène Dodeigne with la Pleureuses (the weeping), Bernar Venet with Deux Arcs de 204 ° (two arcs of 204 degrees), Karel Appel with Poisson , Pierre Zvenigorodsky with Sculpture sonore and Pierre noire fountain , Charlotte Moth with Birds Islands , François-Xavier Lalanne with his work Les Moutons in concrete. Paul Van Hoeydonck with Goldie and a large version of his small sculpture Fallen Astronaut made of solid aluminum, Claude Viseux with homage to Pedro Rodriguez , Gilbert Samel with Chaos de marbre , Albert Féraud with Socratea Exorrhiza and Geneviève Claisse with Sculpture géométrique .
The building
The museum building was designed by Jean Willerwal in 1977. The foundation stone was laid in 1979 and construction was completed in December 1982. That was the year the opening took place. In terms of material, the building is characterized by glass and its white ceramic cladding.
The museum had to be closed in 1997 due to considerable structural damage. It was completely renovated and redesigned inside in 2003 by architects Richard Klein and Benoît Grafteaux.
See also
Immediately adjacent to the LAAC, towards the port, is Bastion 32 of the old port fortifications, which houses the Mémorial du Souvenir , a war museum that commemorates the Battle of Dunkirk and Operation Dynamo .
Web links
Footnotes
Coordinates: 51 ° 2 ′ 45.6 " N , 2 ° 22 ′ 57.2" E